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Maj. Gen.(res.) Meir Dagan, the chief of Mossad's Secret Service, has presented his annual assessment of Israel's state of security to the Knesset Foreign Affairs & Defense Committee. If not stopped, Iran will be able to start producing enriched uranium within months of reactivating its centrifuge process. But at the same time, Dagan was optimistic the international community could deter Tehran by imposing economic sanctions.

Israel and the Palestinian have agreed on a security deal following Israel's recent withdrawal from the Gaza Strip. After weeks of fruitless bargaining, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice pressed the two sides into hammering out an accord. However, Israeli critics warn that it will put Israeli civilians at risk.

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has rejected American pressure to allow the Hamas terror organization to participate in the Palestinian election in January. Sharon was addressing the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, shortly before the arrival of U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who has been pressing Jerusalem to cooperate with the participation of Hamas. Right wing MKs contend that to do so would be similar to the U.S. agreeing to negotiate with Al Qaeda.

In one of his most forceful speeches, U.S. President George W. Bush has condemned Syria and Iran for supporting Islamist terrorism in general and Iraq in particular. Speaking in the White House, Bush declared that Iraq had become the battleground for the confrontation and he was determined to stay the course despite mounting criticism at home and abroad. What are the implications of the Bush address for Israel, the target of Palestinian terrorism that is also backed by Syria and Iran? Zalman Shoval, a foreign policy advisor to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and a former Israeli Ambassador to the U.S., discussed various aspects with David Essing.

After Israel's unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and four West Bank settlements, the focus is now on the upcoming Palestinian elections in January. However, Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas insists that terror organizations such as Hamas must be allowed to participate in the election, although Hamas calls openly for the destruction of Israel and the Jewish people. Middle East expert Dr. Dan Schueftan of Haifa University rejects the idea that Israel supports such an election leading to a Palestinian state that would be based on Israel's destruction.

What are the implications of the brutal killing of Moussa Arafat in the Gaza Strip? What does it reveal about the leadership of Mahmoud Abbas? Jordan's King Abdullah praises Ariel Sharon for implementing the disengagement while warning that al Qaeda may also be active in Israel. In the Likud leadership race, challenger Bibi Netanyahu is facing some tough decisions this weekend in the wake of latest public opinion polls.

Just days before Israeli settlers are to be evacuated from the Gaza Strip, Israel was buffeted time and again, by one surprise after another. With tension reaching a fever pitch over the Gaza withdrawal, Finance Minister Binyamin Netanyahu resigned in protest over the disengagement. Subsequent public opinion polls then showed Netanyahu would topple Sharon in a Likud party election today. Enter U.S. President George W. Bush trying to bolster Sharon and praising his withdrawal plan. While the country is in the throes of the traumatic disengagement, with Sharon sleeping with a loaded pistol under his pillow, Attorney General Manny Mazuz says there is no proof that incitement was responsible for the assassination of former Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin nearly ten years ago.

What happens after Israel's upcoming withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and 4 West Bank settlements? Geographer Joshua Ben-Arieh says he doesn't know but he is certain of one thing; that unless jobs are created for the Palestinian residents of the Gaza Strip, the Roadmap is doomed to failure. Professor (Emeritus) Ben-Arieh of the Hebrew University has discussed his plan with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Palestinian officials. In this interview with IsraCast, Ben Arieh presents his program that may be put on the future Middle East agenda.

The row started when the Vatican condemned recent terror attacks in Egypt, Turkey, Iraq and Britain but omitted Israel. (On July 12th, a Palestinian suicide bomber murdered six Israelis and wounded scores of others in Netanya; this is addition to numerous other less deadly attacks.) The Israeli Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem summoned the Vatican Ambassador to protest and issued a statement that: 'The Pope's omission of this incident cries out to the heavens'. In Rome, the Vatican has responded by saying: 'The Holy See cannot take lessons or instructions from any other authority on the tone and content of its own statements'. Dr. Yitzhak Minerbi is an Israeli expert on Vatican relations and in an interview with David Essing, assesses the current row between Jerusalem and the Vatican.

Al Qaeda and Palestinian terrorists have stepped up their offensives leaving death and destruction in their wake. Meanwhile, in the Middle East, U.S. Secretary Of State Condoleezza Rice has been meeting with Israeli and Palestinian leaders trying to keep the lid on the confrontation before and after Israel's withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and 4 West Bank settlements starting in the second half of August.

Israel may soon launch a massive ground operation, if the Palestinian terror groups do not halt their massive rocketing from the Gaza Strip. In the past 36 hours, over forty Qassam rockets have slammed into the Israeli town of Sderot inside the Israeli border. Sderot's Mayor Eli Moyel has called on Prime Minister Sharon to postpone next moth's Israeli evacuation from Gaza. Sderot's angry citizens and children, who have been holed up in bomb shelters are demanding that Sharon stop appeasing the Americans and send in the IDF to suppress the Palestinian rocket fire. Seven Israelis, six of them women have been murdered this week in terror attacks. U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is to make an urgent trip to the area next week; in the meantime Egyptian Intelligence official Omar Suleiman arrives on the scene to try and persuade the terrorists to stop attacking Israel. Meanwhile, Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas ( Abu Mazen ) cannot or will not order his 30,000 armed security personnel to halt the attacks on Israel.

The London atrocity has again focused on the vital need for international co-operation in the war against Islamic terrorism. In Israel where security is always high, security officials had to be asking themselves if everything possible was being done to prevent a mega-terror attack of the same magnitude from happening here. It's not that Palestinian terrorists have not tried in the past, the concern now is that they may try to imitate the London terrorists. The government decision on the Jerusalem security fence has aroused sharp pro and con reactions. Likud MK Uzi Landau, who opposes Sharon's withdrawal, has accused the Prime Minister of preparing to partition the capital. However Labor MK Beiga Shochat favors the move. Landau and Shochat were interviewed on IBA TV.

Although continually attacked by Palestinian suicide bombers, Israel appeared to be stunned nonetheless by the vicious terrorist assault on the city of London. David Essing reports on initial reactions. In addition, IsraCast is rebroadcasting a previous analysis by American security analyst Frank Gaffney who discussed the issue of open, democratic societies faced with the threat of Islamic terrorism.

Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz calls the Sinai bombings, ‘mega-terror’ - they were aimed at murdering as many Israelis as possible. Mofaz was speaking at an urgent session of the Israeli cabinet after huge bombs ripped through the Taba Hilton hotel and a tourist resort packed with Israeli tourists on the Simchat Torah holiday. IDF Chief Of Staff Moshe Ya’alon said that after explosives were used against Egyptian hotels on Egyptian soil, maybe Egypt would finally crack down on Palestinian arms smuggling through Sinai to the Gaza Strip. IDF intelligence chief, General Aharon Zeevi-Farkash told the cabinet there is a high probability that al-Qaeda carried out the bombings. MK Yuval Steinitz of the Likud, the chairman of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, also says the Mossad has foiled some previous al Qaeda attacks on Israeli and Jewish targets. Dr Steinitz told David Essing there are at least two reasons why al Qaeda was probably responsible for the Sinai bombings:

‘Days Of Penitence’, the major IDF operation to prevent Qassam rockets from hitting the Israeli town of Sderot, entered its fourth day by keeping pressure on the Palestinian terrorists. Over fifty Palestinians most of them armed, have been killed. The counter-offensive was launched after Qassam rockets blew up in Sderot on the eve of Succot murdering two small children; another woman was shot dead by terrorists and two IDF soldiers were also killed. Commenting on the situation, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon declared the Qassams will be stopped.In another development, Palestinians have been filmed transporting Qassam rocket launchers in a United Nations ambulance.

In the recent German elections, parties of the far right made impressive gains. Just how significant is it that more German voters have turned to these parties and their racist ideologies? What has been the reaction of the Jewish community? In addition, JTA correspondent Toby Axelrod will also be commenting on the fact that al Qaeda terrorists used Hamburg, to stage part of the 9/ 11 attack on America. And more recently, German businessmen have again been caught red – handed trying to sell nuclear technology, this time to Iran.

Israel has successfully carried out a live test with an anti-aircraft missile protection system that was recently installed in a number of its commercial aircrafts. The new system recently raised great interest in the U.S. looking for its own program to defend its civilian airliners.